The Greatest 80s and 90s Movie Soundtracks, Era by Era

There was a stretch — roughly Saturday Night Fever through The Matrix — when the soundtrack wasn't an afterthought. It was the second script. You bought the cassette because you couldn't rewatch the movie, and the best 80s and 90s movie soundtracks ended up owning the radio as thoroughly as the films owned the box office.

Here's the canon, era by era. Every film links to its page, where you'll find the songs we carry from it and where each one played in the movie.

The late-70s warm-up

• Saturday Night Fever (1977) — the Bee Gees turn a Brooklyn disco movie into one of the best-selling albums ever made. The blueprint for everything below.
• Grease (1978) — the rare musical whose radio singles ("You're the One That I Want," "Summer Nights") escaped the theater entirely.

The 80s: when the soundtrack WAS the marketing

• Purple Rain (1984) — not a soundtrack so much as Prince's masterpiece with a movie attached. "When Doves Cry" and the title track alone settle the argument.
• Top Gun (1986) — "Danger Zone" on the carrier deck, "Take My Breath Away" winning the Oscar. Synth-rock's finest hour.
• Footloose (1984) — Kenny Loggins again (the undisputed king of the 80s soundtrack), plus Bonnie Tyler and Deniece Williams. Wall-to-wall hits.
• Flashdance (1983) — "What a Feeling" and "Maniac," the movie that made a legwarmer a lifestyle.
• Dirty Dancing (1987) — "(I've Had) The Time of My Life" plus a crate of 60s soul. One of the best-selling soundtracks of all time, and the reason your parents own two copies.
• Beverly Hills Cop (1984) — "Axel F" made a synthesizer instrumental a top-5 hit.
• Rocky III (1982) and Rocky IV (1985) — "Eye of the Tiger," then "Burning Heart." Survivor twice put the montage into the gym-playlist hall of fame.
• St. Elmo's Fire (1985) — "Man in Motion" is pure bottled 1985.
• The Lost Boys (1987) — the goth-glam vampire mixtape, anchored by "Cry Little Sister."
• La Bamba (1987) — Los Lobos' Ritchie Valens covers took a 1958 song to #1 three decades later.
• Stand by Me (1986) — Ben E. King's 1961 classic charted all over again. The movie that proved a soundtrack could time-travel.
• Streets of Fire (1984) — the cult pick: "I Can Dream About You" from a rock-and-roll fable nobody saw and everybody's uncle loves.
• Risky Business (1983) — Tangerine Dream's moody synths plus the "Old Time Rock and Roll" slide. Two soundtracks in one.
• White Nights (1985) — Lionel Richie's Oscar-winning "Say You, Say Me" and Phil Collins on the same tracklist.
• Mannequin (1987) — Starship's "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now," co-written by Diane Warren (see our tour of the writers behind the hits).
• Against All Odds (1984) — Phil Collins' title song long outlived the movie.

The John Hughes teen canon

• The Breakfast Club (1985) — Simple Minds' "Don't You (Forget About Me)," the fist-pump freeze-frame, the eternal detention anthem.
• Pretty in Pink (1986) — OMD's "If You Leave" plus the Psychedelic Furs' title track. New wave's prom night.
• Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) — the great missing album: John Hughes thought the mix was too all-over-the-place to release, so there was no official soundtrack LP. "Twist and Shout" and "Oh Yeah" lived on anyway.
• Weird Science (1985) and Sixteen Candles (1984) round out the set.
• Say Anything (1989) — technically Cameron Crowe, spiritually the same universe. Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes," held overhead forever.

The 90s: mixtapes for the movies

• Pulp Fiction (1994) — Dick Dale's "Misirlou," "Son of a Preacher Man," surf guitar and soul as film language. The decade's most-imitated needle-drop record.
• Trainspotting (1996) — Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life" into Underworld's "Born Slippy." Britpop and rave, bottled.
• Forrest Gump (1994) — a two-disc jukebox of three decades of American radio. The gateway drug for a generation discovering their parents' records.
• The Bodyguard (1992) — Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" spent 14 weeks at #1. The best-selling soundtrack of all time.
• Wayne's World (1992) — put "Bohemian Rhapsody" back on the charts and headbanging in a Pacer into history.
• Singles (1992) — Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains: the grunge scene's official yearbook.
• Reality Bites (1994) — Lisa Loeb's "Stay (I Missed You)" became a #1 hit for an artist with no record deal.
• Empire Records (1995) — Gin Blossoms' "Til I Hear It from You" and the reason you still say "Rex Manning Day."
• Dazed and Confused (1993) and Boogie Nights (1997) — the 70s, curated by the 90s, perfectly.
• Jerry Maguire (1996) — Springsteen's "Secret Garden," plus Cameron Crowe's record-store-clerk taste all over the tracklist.
• Grosse Pointe Blank (1997) — a hitman's ten-year reunion scored entirely with new wave. The best 80s soundtrack of the 90s.
• The Matrix (1999) — industrial, electronica, and "Clubbed to Death." The sound of the millennium flipping over.

The late-90s teen wave

• Clueless (1995) — The Muffs covering "Kids in America" is the platonic ideal of a 90s opening credit.
• She's All That (1999) — Sixpence None the Richer's "Kiss Me" and the prom-makeover moment it soundtracked.
• Cruel Intentions (1999) — The Verve's "Bitter Sweet Symphony" over the final drive: the most devastating needle-drop of the decade.
• The Wedding Singer (1998) — a 1985 time capsule assembled in 1998, and proof the 80s revival started before the 80s were even cold.

Keep watching

This is the tour, not the whole theater — browse every film we cover at Now Showing, or come at it from the other side: pick a year like 1984, a decade like the 80s, or an artist and see what they soundtracked. And when you find the movie that owned your VCR, the song pages are waiting for your memory of it.